Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: food

How do you all feel about this?

Strips you pee on at home and then scan with your phone to see if you are dealing with any deficiencies. The test results provide food recommendations, supplement recommendations, and lifestyle recommendations intended to help improve the way you “look, feel, and perform…”

Probably rudimentary but I like where their head is at.

With Bloom you can track 15 health metrics from the comfort of your home and get personalized food, supplement and lifestyle recommendations to help you feel your best.

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Anyone with a modicum of skill can create deepfake videos using artificial intelligence, but experts suggest that AI may also be the solution that allows rapid and accurate identification and detection.

By now, most of us have shared a few chuckles over AI-generated deepfake videos, like those in which the face of comedian and impressionist Bill Hader gradually takes on the likenesses of Tom Cruise, Seth Rogen, and Arnold Schwarzenegger as he imitates the celebrities. We’ve seen actor Ryan Reynolds’ mug superimposed over Gene Wilder’s in the 1971 classic film “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.” We’ve even marveled over businessman Elon Musk being turned into a baby.

It all can be quite humorous, but not everyone is laughing. Tech companies, researchers, and politicians alike are growing concerned that the increasing sophistication of the artificial intelligence and machine learning technology powering deepfakes will outpace our ability to discern between genuine and doctored imagery.

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It’s no surprise that the world is wasting billions of dollars on food, throwing out un-recycled trash, and filling landfills with other odds and ends. In fact, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, as of 2012 Americans generated 251 million tons of trash or garbage. Yikes!

There are creative ways to reduce the amount of waste such as source reduction, recycling, or even composting. A few people in the world strive to live an almost complete waste-free lifestyle by the practice of humanure.

We see refuse receptacles at work and around public places. However, even when garbage and recycle bins are available, some folks choose to throw away trash mindlessly by littering. What if there was a way to help reduce waste that goes beyond making sure trash gets into a bin?

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Scientists have created the world’s first living, self-healing robots using stem cells from frogs.

Named xenobots after the African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis) from which they take their stem cells, the machines are less than a millimeter (0.04 inches) wide — small enough to travel inside human bodies. They can walk and swim, survive for weeks without food and work together in groups.

These are “entirely new life-forms,” said the University of Vermont, which conducted the research with Tufts University.

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African swine fever has wiped out a third of China’s pig population. Now government officials are discussing dramatic steps to stabilize the world’s largest pork market.

Pork is a huge deal in China. The country is home to half of all the pigs on the planet. The meat is a staple of the Chinese diet, which means its scarcity could damage China’s social stability. The outbreak of swine fever also threatens to upend the global pork supply chain.

While Chinese authorities have already made plans to shore up the pig market — including subsidies for pig farms and families who may struggle with soaring prices — they’re stepping up efforts to deal with the crisis.

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#biophotonics #photonics

ONNA, Japan, Jan. 13, 2020 — Scientists at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) Graduate University have developed a light-based device that can act as a biosensor, detecting biological substances in materials, such as harmful pathogens in food. The scientists said that their tool, an optical microresonator, is 280× more sensitive than current industry-standard biosensors, which can detect only cumulative effects of groups of particles, not individual molecules.

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Maintaining five healthy habits—eating a healthy diet, exercising regularly, keeping a healthy body weight, not drinking too much alcohol, and not smoking—at middle-age may increase years lived free of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer, according to a new study led by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

People who practice healthy habits at age 50 lived more years free of chronic diseases compared to those who did not practice any of these habits. Women who practiced all five habits gained about ten years of disease-free life, and men who did so gained about eight years. A healthy lifestyle not only improves lifespan (overall life expectancy) but also healthspan (healthy or disease-free life expectancy).

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Location: Manhattan, KS

NBAF - National Agor-Defense Facility

The National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF) will be a state-of-the-art biocontainment laboratory for the study of diseases that threaten both America’s animal agricultural industry and public health. DHS S&T is building the facility to standards that fulfill the mission needs of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) which will own, manage and operate (PDF, 16 pgs., 165 KB) the NBAF once construction and commissioning activities are complete. The NBAF will strengthen our nation’s ability to conduct research, develop vaccines, diagnose emerging diseases, and train veterinarians. DHS S&T will leverage the facility as a national asset to fulfill homeland security mission needs.

The United States currently does not have a laboratory facility with maximum biocontainment (BSL-4) space to study high-consequence zoonotic diseases affecting large livestock. The NBAF will be the first laboratory facility in the U.S. to provide BSL-4 laboratories capable of housing cattle and other large livestock. The NBAF will also feature a vaccine development module. For more information about the facility and intended use of its state-of-the-art features, please visit the USDA NBAF Program website.

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